


half-asleep and half-divine

by openhearts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Darcy Lewis-centric, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn, blatant Erik Selvig avoidance sorry, oblique references to Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22046740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: In November 2013, Thor refused the throne of Asgard and returned to Earth.  Jane was in London.  Darcy had an intern.In April 2015, the Avengers assemble in Sokovia to raid a HYDRA base.A lot can change in nineteen months.-We have mostly wasted timeHalf asleep and half divineWaiting for the faintest lightWaiting for these wounds to healNo we're never as lost or as found as we think we are-- Lost & Found by Tyler Lyle
Relationships: Darcy Lewis & Thor, Darcy Lewis/Thor, Jane Foster/Thor
Comments: 21
Kudos: 242





	half-asleep and half-divine

___________________

  
November 2013

___________________

“They named you RODNEY?” Jane shrieks.

“This is exactly the kind of pun made by someone who would steal an iPod,” Darcy points out bitterly.

“No, Darcy, this is from Stark Industries.” Jane rifles through the papers that had arrived in two separate envelopes that day. “SHIELD kept the Donald Blake ID.”

“I don’t look like a Rodney do I?” Thor tests the name out silently -  _ Rodney _ .

“No, that was just Tony Stark or one of his underlings being funny I think, you don’t have to go by Rodney,” Jane answers. “I guess Donald wouldn’t be  _ so _ bad . . .”

Darcy and Thor exchange a look.

“Well we know who you are, so just don’t make any other friends and it won’t be a problem!” Darcy reassures him.

___________________

  
  


“Listen if you’re going to be hanging out for a while you need to be reachable-”

Thor stretches out a hand, palm up, toward Darcy. Demonstrating his reachability. She shakes her head and smiles as she smacks his palm, and he grins back, pleased.

“The phone, my dude. You gotta learn to use it.”

“It’s too small, I’d prefer paper and a quill.”

“Paper and a-  _ Thor _ . This is technology. The postal service takes days, okay.”

“Your couriers take days to deliver a message in the same city?” He sniffs. “In Asgard-”

“This is Earth. On Earth, we do phones, Jane help me out here?”

Jane, squinting at one of three sensor readouts she’s trying to unravel from their printers simultaneously, doesn’t answer. 

“Here,” Darcy presses on, “I even put in my own ringtone, hang on.”

Darcy hands Thor his phone, which he takes grudgingly, and pulls out her own, thumbing to his contact listing and touching the call button. After a few moments his screen lights up and the song starts:

“ _ And we'll never be royals _

_ It don't run in our blood _

_ That kind of lux just ain't for us _

_ We crave a different kind of buzz _ ”

Darcy sings along, grooving to it with hand motions:

“ _ Let me be your ruler, you can call me Queen B _

_ And baby I'll rule (I'll rule I'll rule I'll rule) _

_ Let me live that fantasy _ ”

“Darcy,” says Thor, into the phone, on which he has answered her call. His voice just barely echoes from her own phone’s speaker. She brings it to her ear.

“Hello, this is Darcy, who’s calling please?

“Thor, Odinson, god of thunder.”

“Hey man! What up?”

“Thank you for commissioning this song for me! I will call you Queen B as you have requested.”

“Awesome,” Darcy leans forward and holds up a hand for a high five, which Thor readily gives. “That’s awesome, thanks Thor.”

“I’m going to push the red button now.”

“Okay buddy, I’ll see you soon.”

“Farewell Queen B.”

“Farewell, you cell phone user, you.”

“You guys,” Jane laughs, “are so dumb.”

___________________

  
December

___________________

  
  


“Jane it is frigid out here. I can’t feel, like, half my body.”

“I know, I know, I only have a few more recordings to take. You can wait inside you know.”

“But it’s so pretty,” Darcy argues, shaking her head and tilting her face up to the black sky scattered with glitter-bright stars. “Anyway it’s really murdery in there at night when it’s empty and you know how I feel about being murdered, Jane.”

“Hm?”

“Against. I’m against being murdered.”

“Okay,” Jane replies distractedly, absorbed in adjusting dials.

Thor pushes open the door to the rooftop with one hand, palming three steaming styrofoam cups in the other.

“Big T!” Darcy greets him, teeth chattering. He offers one of the coffees to her and she takes it gratefully, wrapping her hands around the warm cup.

“Thank you,” Jane greets him with a peck on the lips as he offers her cup and stands back, observing her equipment. “I need like ten more minutes, tops, I promise.”

“Take your time.” Thor sips from his own cup and squints up at the stars as if to greet them as well.

“Y’know that big red cape would come in so handy right now, how come you don’t rock that look anymore again?” Darcy asks from her post at one corner of the roof, making sure one of the triangulation sensors doesn’t get blown over the edge.

“The dry-cleaning got to be a problem,” Thor shrugs as he walks over, casual as anything in the breath-taking cold. He holds open one side of his long wool overcoat for Darcy to crowd close to his side.

“Oh, Jane, he’s learning people-things, we’re teaching him so much!”

“Uh-huh,” Jane calls back distractedly. 

“She’s not listening,” Darcy stage-whispers to Thor.

“If we distract her from her work it might take longer,” Thor whispers back.

Darcy mashes her lips together and hunkers in closer.

“I would ask how you’re not shivering right now-”

“I’m a god.”

“- but then you’d say shit like that.”

A particularly strong gust of wind whips Darcy’s hair across her eyes and she reaches blindly for one leg of the tripodal base she’s meant to be steadying, narrowly missing and sloshing coffee over her gloved hand and down over the toes of hers and Thor’s boots in the process, while Thor simply reaches out and nudges the equipment back into place with one finger.

“Darcy!” Jane calls sharply, “Keep it still!”

“We got it!” Darcy calls back semi-amiably.

“Can these not be affixed in place?”

“That’s what I’m for,” Darcy shuffles forward to put a hand back on the tripod.

“May I ask . . .”

“Yeeessssss?”

“What drew you to this work?”

“Hm.” Darcy sips her coffee. “Well there was the six credits. And the possibility for expense-paid travel. But mostly, yeah, it was the credits.”

“So you were never interested in the science?”

“Not the way Jane is. I mean once I started and figured out what she really needed, there isn’t any reason I have to be. I can organize the data for her and make the little practical things easier so she can focus on the big stuff.”

“That was at the start.”

“Yeah, well then you came on the scene and things got more interesting slash complicated. I’m pretty sure Jane would have had, like, a thousand more qualified applicants if she’d ever bothered look for one after New Mexico, but by then I had a system going for her and it would have been more work to train somebody else so we just stuck with it.”

“And you became friends.”

“Yeah. Jane’s not someone I probably would have ever met if not for this, but when you spend as much time together as we have it’s kind of inevitable.”

Thor hums and sips his coffee.

“Y’know the funny thing is, Jane tells everybody how I was the only applicant to that internship, like that’s how she ended up getting stuck with me. But the  _ really hilarious _ part is that she was the only one that called me to interview, out of twenty-something applications I turned in.”

Darcy takes another drink, impatiently pushing a long strand of hair off her eyes.

“The fates ordained it then,” Thor says, a little loftily, and Darcy snorts.

“Hey is it really three crones with like the one eyeball and the strings or whatever?”

“The  _ what _ ?”

“No nevermind I think I’m thinking of a Disney movie.”

“Done!” Jane announces. “Let’s go home.”

“Let’s go home,” Thor repeats.

"Let's not get murdered on the way!" Darcy cheers.

  
  


___________________

  
  


“Darcy can you add all these charts by date to the binders for the-”

“Actuallyyy,” Darcy pauses as she’s walking by Jane, doing a roundabout pivot on one heel and tugging out her earbuds as she does. “I was gonna go shopping for stuff for Christmas dinner before the stores get too crazy? Is that okay or do you need it done now?”

“Can you do it by the end of the day? Wait, what about the other one, the intern, Evan?”

“Ian?”

“Whatever,” Jane waves the sheaf of papers in her hand for Darcy to go on.

Darcy purses her lips and looks at Jane oddly for a beat. “Ian quit. Like, two months ago.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah, SHIELD wanted him to sign like twenty more pages of NDAs after the whole London thing and he got all freaked out and,” Darcy adjusts her glasses, effectively hiding the expression that flits over her face before she swallows it back. “. . . yeah he quit. Two months. Ago.”

“Huh. Can you get the canned cranberry sauce with no actual cranberries in it?”

“Yes I can,” Darcy agrees easily, finally taking the mess of papers from Jane and tapping the stack on the table top to neaten it up again, “and can I also borrow Prince Charming so he can help me carry the heavy stuff?”

“If you can get him to wake up, be my guest,” Jane answers, picking up her coffee mug and swirling it around before sniffing. She shrugs and takes a drink, wincing even as she swallows. “He’s been sleeping all day.”

“Do you wanna -?”

“Oh no,” Jane abandons the mug next to the sink and gets another from the cabinet, pouring into it from a freshly brewed pot. “No, I don’t, I tried waking him up this morning and I think he started swearing in ancient Norse in his sleep. I haven’t been back in there since.”

“Nice. Nice Jane, that’s really nice.”

Darcy knocks gently on the door to Jane’s bedroom. There’s no reply so she knocks harder.

“Yeah he’s not gonna hear that,” Jane says helpfully from behind her coffee cup as she makes notes on the paper in front of her.

“I would like it noted that if he’s sleeping naked in there I tried to get you to be the one to wake him up.”

Jane waves her on, not even looking up.

“Thor? It’s Darcy, I’m opening the door now, please don’t summon MewMew and bludgeon me.” 

Darcy pushes open the door slowly and peeks around through her fingers while her eyes adjust to the meager light coming in through the curtains and layer of blankets Jane put up over them to block more light when she was keeping nocturnal hours.

Thor is stretched out diagonally across the queen size bed and still hanging off both corners. He’s covered by the sheet up to his waist and he’s got a pillow in a stranglehold, his cheek mashed against it and his mouth slack as he sleeps. Darcy’s pretty sure his eyelids twitch when she makes her way around his feet but he’s still otherwise, his breathing deep and even. 

“Hey,” Darcy whispers, “Buddy, wake up for a minute.” 

She reaches out cautiously and nudges his shoulder once, then again and his eyes flick open and focus on her immediately, which is unnerving. After a second he inhales deeply and shoves his face in the pillow to yawn and groan something unintelligible.

Darcy clears her throat. “Are you alive?”

He mumbles into the pillow again before rolling over, one hand lazily adjusting the sheet to keep it roughly in place. Darcy mashes her lips together and trains her eyes on his face.

“When is it?” he asks muzzily.

“Friday afternoon.”

He hums in acknowledgement. “Where’s Jane?”

“Working. She said she tried to wake you this morning and you swore at her in Asgardian.”

Thor clenches his teeth and stretches out his bottom lip in a ‘yikes’ grimace and Darcy snorts out a laugh. “It’s okay she wasn’t offended.”

“Good. Is everything alright?” he asks, looking up and focusing on her face, seeming a little more awake.

“Everything’s fine, I came to ask if you would like to go grocery shopping with me for Christmas dinner. The stores get so crazy I’d rather go now when it’s not too busy and they’re not completely picked over.”

“Yes, of course. Do we need to leave soon?” He makes to sit up, the sheet falling a few inches.

Darcy raises her eyebrows before exaggeratedly widening her eyes. Thor snorts and tugs the sheet back up, drawing his knees up and tucking an arm behind his head. 

“You’ve got time to put on more than a sheet and brush your teeth,” Darcy assures him, stifling a laugh before stretching out a toe in her favorite fuzzy chenille socks to poke his knee through the sheet. 

“Very well,” he replies. “Shall I-” He pauses glancing down at the sheet and then pointing vaguely toward the dresser.

“What, you’re shy?” Darcy shoots back.

Thor’s mouth cocks in a sleepy little grin and he raises an eyebrow but Darcy puts up her hands quickly, jumping up from her seat on the bedside table. 

“Kidding, kidding!”

She scoots out of the room to the deep rumble of his laughter.

___________________

  
  


“What are we gonna do with six pounds of chestnuts, we have no open fire to roast them on.”

“The oven will do.”

“Who's going to crack them all?”

“Oh I use the side of Mjolnir-”

“Of course. Of course you do. Get more.”

“Where do they keep the mead?”

___________________

  
January 2014

___________________

“Uh, excuse me?!”

Darcy startles and nearly rips the page in her book she was mid-way through turning when Jane’s voice barks out as she paces past the couch Darcy is curled up on.

“Do you want to explain to me exactly what your hammer is doing on my rough draft?”

Thor had been poking around in the hall closet last Darcy had been aware and now he squares off with Jane from across the room, Darcy caught in the middle on the couch between them. 

“I need to speak with you, now, without distraction. I asked, and you refused-”

“I told you I would have time later tonight,” Jane cuts in, “this is-”

“I won’t be here later tonight, I’ve been called to Asgard.”

Darcy, in the midst of scootching down to make herself less noticeable in case either of them remembered she was there, freezes.

“What?” Jane draws up short, her voice going quiet. Darcy knows it’s the kind of quiet Jane gets when she’s hurt but trying to be reasonable about it.

“There are conflicts in the lower realms that need a representative from Asgard to dissolve,” Thor explains gently. “If all goes well I’ll be back here before the end of your month.”

Darcy cringes into her book.

“Our month,” Jane corrects, going steely. “It’s not just my month, just because time passes differently there doesn't mean this isn't  _ our _ time. I thought you were here so that we could be-”

“Together?” Thor interrupts, the gentleness fading even though his volume doesn’t raise. “Are we together while you write? Are we together while you research? While you take readings and stare up at the stars while I sit beside you, waiting? Are we together then, Jane?”

Darcy debates with herself the merits of oozing to the floor and army-crawling into the kitchen. Perhaps then out onto the terrace in the several inches of snow, where it might be more comfortable.

“You were gone last time for two years,” Jane says reproachfully.

“And I have apologized for my absence-”

“I don’t need apologies, I just need to know you’re coming back. Otherwise what are we doing?”

“I will return to you. You have my word.”

It’s silent for a few long seconds, and Darcy realizes they’ve both glanced at her. She raises her hands, earbuds pinched in her fingers, and purposefully tucks them into her ears before ungracefully rolling off the couch and to her feet, ducking into the kitchen as Thor crosses the room to take Jane in his arms. Darcy doesn’t actually have any music playing so she hears it when Jane mumbles darkly,

“Take that paperweight with you.”

___________________

  
  


“Are you hurt?”

“Scrapes,” Thor answers Jane dismissively, wincing as he tries to reach one of the buckles on his armour and failing.

“Let me,” Jane says softly, carefully beginning to unfasten it for him.

Darcy purses her lips and averts her eyes, casually scrolling through her phone while the two of them murmur together across the room. True to his estimate, Thor had gotten back before the end of January. At 11:43 p.m. on January 31st, but, still.

“Darcy, can you?”

“Yep,” Darcy jumps up and takes the cape as Jane hands it to her, both of them staggering a little under the surprising weight of it.

“Man you were right, dry cleaning this thing must be a bitch.”

“Darcy,” Jane laughs under her breath.

“What, it’s a valid consideration. Does Asgard have laundry service?”

“We have an armory with attendants,” Thor answers distractedly, using his free hand to pick at a clump of dried blood and a twig stuck in his hair.

Thor and Jane lift off the armour together, which requires him to trade Mjolnir from one hand to another. Darcy reaches for it on instinct. Thor catches her eye and smiles tiredly.

“Be honest, how often do people do that though?”

His smile widens a bit. “More often here than Asgard.”

Jane sets the armour gingerly on the coffee table and frowns at it. “I’m gonna get some Clorox wipes.”

“I think we have some Magic Erasers too, in that basket by the dryer?” Darcy calls after Jane. She nudges Thor gently with one elbow and nods to the rats nest of his hair. “I have some detangler you can borrow.”

“Thank you.”

___________________

  
  


Darcy looks around the apartment. It’s clean, older construction, in good repair, but sterile to say the least. Given that Thor had arrived on Earth with nothing but his armour, cape, and Mjolnir, and had been staying most nights at Jane and Darcy’s shared sublet near the university since then, there’s little to indicate the place is even inhabited beyond the provided furniture and kitchen essentials. Thor stands in the area too far from the door to be the small entryway and not far enough into the living room to be comfortable. Mjolnir hangs on the peg bar behind the door.

“Well this place is sad, let’s go shopping.”

They walk right back out, get in the car, and Darcy heads for the nearest thrift store.

They come back later with a gold-painted swan planter, an octagonal side table with vaguely floral designs deeply carved into the wooden base and a scarred marble top, a strangely over-sized wood and chrome table lamp with a coffee-colored fabric shade, and three huge glass beer steins. When everything’s placed - the lamp in the bedroom, the table in the living room, the swan in the middle of the dining table, and the beer steins on the breakfast bar counter, Darcy puts her hands on her hips and surveys the place.

“Good start?”

Thor looks around and nods, hesitantly.

“Look I know it’s just Earth and you’re used to-” she waggles her fingers through the air, something between finger quotes and jazz hands- “magical royal palace living or whatever-”

“No, I like it, forgive me. Thank you for showing me Goodwill, Darcy.”

He smiles and winks and she points at him, smiling back. “I see what you did there, that little goodwill/Goodwill pun. I gotta get going though, it’s cold and my couch is calling me, bring it in.”

They hug goodbye, and Darcy leaves, patting Mjolnir on her way out the door. Thor smiles after her, turning to look around the empty space himself. The meager light coming through the windows is blue and cold. He hangs up his coat on the hook beside Mjolnir and scrubs his hands through his hair, scratching his blunt nails against his scalp before pulling out the cord wrapping it and combing it all back again a little more neatly.

When Jane arrives later she takes one look at the swan on the table and snorts, pursing her lips in a late attempt not to laugh. “Darcy went shopping?”

“Yes, we went this afternoon to make the place feel a little more . . . homey.”

Jane shakes her head fondly. “Let me guess, the giant gold bird is Darcy’s interpretation of secondhand Asgardian chic?”

Thor shrugs, smiling. He pats the swan’s head as he passes by to the kitchen. “Things from the thrift store have soul, she tells me.”

Jane laughs again and joins him in the kitchen, coming up behind him to wrap her arms around his waist and press her cheek to his back. “Well that’s one way of looking at it. Should we get curry or tacos for dinner?”

“You choose.”

___________________

  
February

___________________

  
  


“Hey how’d it go?” Jane asks as Darcy drops her purse on the kitchen counter and does a slow collapse on top of it until she’s face down next to the bowl of apples.

“I have to have my wisdom teeth out.”

“It’s not that bad, I had mine out my freshman year.” Jane crunches loudly into an apple as she talks. “Just do it over spring break so you don’t miss school.”

“Jane.” Darcy straightens again, eyeing the apple balefully.

“Mm?”

“We’re in London. School is in Virginia. I’ve been missing school for like eight months.”

“You know what I mean. Do it when they won’t be expecting you to keep up with assignments online either.”

“Yeah,” Darcy sighs, pulling out a stool and sitting down to pull out the card she’d gotten with dates written on the back. “So the surgeon who can do it under my dad’s insurance only has an opening in two weeks. Other than that I’d have to wait like three months.”

“Okay, let me know if you need a ride or anything, okay?”

“You and Thor don’t have any plans?”

“For two weeks from now? I mean I can’t speak for him, he might need to go fly off somewhere again-” Jane mutters, clearly not as over his absence as she had been acting around him.

“No, Jane, Valentine’s Day is in two weeks. You guys are all,” Darcy waves her hands, “blockbuster romance movie, aren’t you going out to dinner or something?”

“Uh, I hadn’t thought about it?” Jane laughs a little, suddenly snapped out of her bout of grudge-holding.

Darcy shrugs. “Okay, well, then I’ll keep my appointment for that day. And yeah I’ll need a ride. I mean unless Erik can take a day off, but I know he’s in the middle of his first semester-”

“No, no it’s fine, yeah, I can drive you. Can you please get those print outs and put them-”

“With the toaster readings from yesterday?”

“Darcy come on it’s a  _ phase meter _ -”

Darcy smiles sweetly and Jane rolls her eyes, shooing her away to get filing.

___________________

  
  


“Thor?”

“She wakes.”

He smiles. Darcy grimaces. The whole lower half of her face feels huge and numb and-

“Where’s Jane?”

“She went to get something from the car.”

Darcy closes her eyes against a sudden little slosh of nausea followed by a wave of shivers. 

“Are you cold?” Thor looks around for a blanket but Darcy holds up a shaky hand to wave him off.

“It’s the anesthesia wearing off, not cold,” she explains, her voice hoarse and wavering from the shaking. “S’okay.” She makes a hideous-feeling attempt at a smile.

He settles back into his chair and purses his lips, watching her shiver.

“This seems-”

“Terrible?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry my mortality is harshing your mellow.”

“The teeth they pulled out-” his horror at the very idea shows all over his face - “they’re called wisdom teeth?”

“Yeah everybody has them, sometimes they come in fine but when they don’t you have to get them pulled. Or sometimes they’re impacted and they have to dig them out of your gums.”

“I've never had to have teeth pulled-”

“Because god, I remember,” Darcy sighs amicably.

Thor swallows, and blinks, and swallows again.

Darcy holds out the emesis basin from her tray table, her hand still shaking.

Jane arrives with a helium balloon printed with a picture of One Direction as the nurse is taking out Darcy’s IV. Darcy dissolves into still-drugged giggles at the balloon.

“What? I listen to things!” Jane defends, “they sing that song you only sing along to when you think no one’s listening!”

“That is very embarrassing and very sweet thank you Janey,” Darcy winces, reaching up to touch her swollen jaw.

“Come on let’s get you home.”

Tucked in on the couch with the remote and water, her bottle of prescription painkillers, and phone nearby, Darcy finds Parks and Recreation on Netflix, pausing when her phone alarm rings to remind her to take her pain medication. She whimpers as she swallows awkwardly with a still-half-numb mouth and winces, laying her head back on the pillow behind her and sighing.

“This blows,” she mumbles, turning on her side with effort. She closes her eyes and frowns. “Hey, you know what, that One Direction song is good, I’m taking back my embarrassment.”

She notices only when he’s right in front of her that Thor has come over to kneel next to the couch. “Sorry you guys had to change your plans. First Valentine’s Day, big coupley stuff around here. Sorry,” she rambles, foggily drugged up and sleepy.

“This is a day to celebrate love, is it not?”

“Yeah?”

“Then our time is well spent,” he smiles that sunshine-sweet smile and Darcy closes her eyes and hums, already half-asleep.

___________________

  
March

___________________

  
  


Darcy wakes suddenly with a cold string of drool pooling on her pillow and a raging headache. She finds her phone, swipes the screen awake and groans again when she sees it’s nearly six in the evening and she has napped way longer than she intended. There’s a noise like a gust of wind and a thump from across the apartment by the entry door and Darcy startles, containing her yelp of surprise just barely. She frowns and listens, waiting. Nothing. Then, another thump. 

Her taser is in her purse which is hanging on the handle of her closet door; she feels ridiculous for a moment tiptoeing over to dig it out but decides she’ll only feel a little stupid if nothing turns out to be wrong. She opens the door and slips into the hallway, pressed to the wall and moving carefully to avoid the creaky floorboards along the way. As she nears the end of the hallway she slows, peeking around the corner as the front doorway comes into view.

“Oh my god.”

Thor’s leaning against the door in full armour, bloodied and bruised. Darcy drops her taser and goes running.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

Thor’s panting, and wincing, but he shrugs and motions casually with Mjolnir. 

“Just some dragons. And cats, but,” he motions high above his own head, “really really big cats. That can hop,” he demonstrates with his free hand, “between dimensions. And knock people between dimensions. But also the dragons, so.” He shrugs, again, in finality.

“Yikes. Well,” Darcy looks him over, “Jane’s out doing observation and I think she said Erik is gonna meet her. Do you want me to let her know you’re back early, or…?”

He shakes his head, “We should go.”

“Go?”

“Portal,” he repeats, by way of explanation, “It should have been well-hidden, but there’s a small chance one of those beings could track me here. Heimdall will alert me when it’s secure.”

“Uuhhh okay. Can I like pack a bag?”

“Quickly.”

When Darcy comes back with a bag hastily crammed full of a change of clothes, her toothbrush, and phone charger, Thor is still waiting by the door, still with the disheveled hair, scrapes, and general sweatiness he’d had before, but now in a pair of faded jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.

“Hang on, you’re wearing people clothes. Do you keep a change in the hall closet or something?”

He flashes a little half-smile. “It’s an illusion,” he lifts a corner of his maroon t-shirt and it shimmers at the edges and reveals his full armour and a swath of the fabric of his cape, impossibly billowing, beneath.

“What. The hell. You could do magic all this time?”

“Loki taught me a few spells when we were children.” His face slackens for a moment before he shakes out of it and nods to Darcy, extending his hand. “Are you ready?”

“Where are we going anyway, do you have some secret space hideout? Are we going to Asgard?!”

“The apartment SHIELD provides should do well and be more comfortable for you should I need to leave again.”

“Gee. Exciting. Do we at least get to travel by Mewmew?”

“Not unless we want to alert the very creatures we’re hoping to evade to our exact location.”

Darcy waves Thor towards the door, digging her car keys out of her purse on the way.

“Honestly sometimes I don’t know why we even keep you around,” she sighs.

When they arrive at the apartment Thor goes about checking through the rooms while Darcy plops down on the couch in the living room and checks to see if Jane has texted her back. She hasn’t. Darcy tries calling again, unsurprised when there’s no answer. She doesn’t leave another message.

“Still no answer?” Thor asks as he comes back into the room.

“Nope. This is exactly what it’s like to try to get ahold of her like ninety percent of the time.” Darcy turns, tucking her feet up under her on the couch and leaning one arm along the back of it. 

“Yes she does get absorbed in her work. Still I need to make sure-”

“Of course, of course, go do the protective hero thing, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good. Good. If something happens,” he pulls the phone out that she had given thim months ago from the pocket of the pretend jeans he’s pretend wearing. Or maybe they’re real jeans he’s pretend wearing. Or pretend jeans he’s really wearing, Darcy isn’t quite clear on how the magicked clothing works. “Alert me with this.”

Darcy gives him a thumbs up. “Got you on speed dial, big guy.”

He smiles, tucks the phone away and pauses for just a moment, reaching out a little awkwardly to touch her hand where it rests on the back of the couch. Darcy smiles, charmed, and holds her hand up for a fist-bump which Thor gamely reciprocates.

When he closes the door behind him Darcy gets up and locks it, deciding that even if a deadbolt is unlikely to do much against dimension-hopping giant cats, she’d rather say she tried her best. She flops back on the couch and pulls her taser out of her purse, keeping it in one hand while she swipes open her phone in the other.

It’s close to an hour before Thor returns, this time much more casually than the first time. Darcy glances up from where she’s sitting cross legged on the couch, her hair down and sectioned between her hands as she braids it to a video tutorial on her phone propped on the coffee table.

“I bet she didn’t even know I’d been calling, huh?”

“Jane and Erik are working on some equipment and plan to test it overnight,” Thor answers diplomatically, setting Mjolnir on the coffee table carefully and then dropping down into the armchair beside the couch. “And no, she didn’t, but she apologized. In her way.”

Darcy snorts. “Sounds about right. Are we good then?”

“Yes, Heimdall has seen no trouble. No visitors here?”

“Just my six biker boyfriends,” Darcy answers automatically, forgetting that Thor won’t get the joke.

He raises an eyebrow but says nothing, instead nodding to her hands weaving her hair into a four-sectioned braid. “Is mine long enough to do that?”

Darcy grins in surprise. “I’m not sure, I can barely do it with mine, but I’ll try.”

“Good, I’ll clean up first.” He clears his throat. “Are you hungry? I mean, would you mind-”

“Dude I’m always hungry, have you met me? How many pizzas should I order? Like three? Are you pro- or anti-pineapple? You know what, don’t even worry about it, I’ll get one just for me and you can try some if you want.”

“We will feast my victory with pineapple pizza!” he calls, already heading toward the bathroom.

“Pizza’ll be here in twenty,” Darcy says when Thor emerges from the bathroom in a billow of steamy fragrant air. 

She eyes his wet hair dripping over his bare shoulders, sweatpants clinging to his hips, and bare feet. “Okay, I gotta know, are any of your clothes real, or is it all just magic trick clothes? Because I could use some of those, fitting all this in stuff that’s not a muumuu can be murder.”

Thor snickers and snaps the waistband of his sweatpants. “This is more comfortable than armour.”

Darcy clears her throat and concentrates on pulling up the braid tutorial on her phone again, hoping he won’t notice her blushing. He doesn’t say anything, but she thinks the grin on his face as he sits on the floor in front of the couch is probably a little shit-eating, which figures for the kind of shameless flirt he can be sometimes. Darcy starts combing her fingers carefully through his hair, working through the knots little by little. 

“Uh, the spell, for the clothes,” Thor says into the silence, as if he’d just remembered. “It’s not something I can teach, and it wouldn’t work on you. It’s specific to the person. I wouldn’t know how to modify it for someone else.”

“Well doesn’t that just figure,” Darcy sighs with put-on disappointment, nudging his shoulder with her knee to let him know she’s kidding.

He hums in acknowledgement, his posture loose and comfortable as he leans back just slightly into her hands. Darcy finishes combing through it all and carefully starts to divide his hair into sections for the braid.

“Our mother taught Loki the spells.” Thor’s voice is even quieter now. “I would follow after the warriors in their training while Loki was with Mother practicing magic. I thought it was terribly boring at the time.”

“You miss him don’t you?” Darcy asks softly after a beat.

Thor’s shoulders sag a little. “I thought we would have so much more time,” he says, his voice faraway.

“I had a brother. Kind of,” Darcy says finally. Thor turns his head just barely as if to look at her but she tugs a little on his hair to get him to look ahead again. “I was nine and he was a surprise baby. He and my mom both died when she was giving birth to him.”

Thor exhales but says nothing, leaving space for her to continue.

“It’s weird, you know, I mean I never got to know him to miss him. There was all this possibility and all this change I was going to have to get used to - not being an only child anymore. And then it turned out I was still an only child, I just didn’t have my mom anymore.”

“I’m sorry-”

“Thanks. I don’t mean to say all that like you should feel bad for wishing you had more time with your brother. But I get what it’s like to lose your mom too.”

Thor’s pause is long, considering. Darcy works carefully on his hair, giving him room for it.

“She loved me, of course, I know she did,” he says finally. “There was no great discord in our relationship. And yet I always knew she was more for Loki than for me. Still her passing . . . I feel . . . unmoored.”

“Like you’ll never quite feel all the way steady again,” Darcy adds softly.

“Yes,” he says, his voice sounding absent with realization.

Darcy loops an elastic band around the end of the braid and tugs on it gently and Thor turns, twisted sideways to rest a hand over her knee. She avoids his sympathetic eyes, shrugging at nothing and picking up her phone, sighing when she smears the screen with her wet slick fingers. She rubs the phone screen on her leggings, concentrating on the motion much harder than she needs to.

“Losing what you expected but never had . . . it’s still a loss. And for a child, so much stranger to bear.” Thor squeezes her knee. Darcy purses her lips and nods in agreement. 

No one’s ever said it that way.  _ Stranger to bear _ . It’s an apt description for her nine-year-old self’s feelings, a sensation deep in her chest of a tiny faraway ache suddenly loosening.

“Yeah,” she whispers, nodding half to herself. 

She answers his sad eyes finally with a wry little smile as if to dismiss the topic.

“Let me take a picture of your pretty princess hair,” she demands, nudging Thor to turn back around. He obeys. She clicks a picture with her phone and then turns it to show him and he smiles up at her softly, giving a thumbs up.

The buzzer at the door sounds.

“Victory pizza!” Darcy cheers, scrambling up and over the arm of the couch to buzz in the delivery.

___________________

  
  


“Hey, how come you didn’t tell us we missed your birthday?” Darcy asks from where she’s using three rolling chairs as a makeshift couch to lounge and read while she waits for Jane to offer her some work to do.

Thor glances up questioningly from his book, and single chair, and Darcy holds up her own - an illustrated collection of Norse myths. Thor tilts his head in confusion.

“This says you’re the god of thunder and also of fertility - which, Jane, did he tell you about that one?” Jane doesn’t look up from where she’s stationed at a work table with a machine disassembled in front of her. “Seems relevant,” Darcy adds, “Anyway, god of fertility, celebrated or honored as coming forth during spring, and the official first day of spring is March 20th. That’s two days ago.”

“We don’t really celebrate birthdays on Asgard, time is . . . different.”

“Well you’re not in Asgard now, soooo, do you want to do anything?”

“If you like.”

“You want cupcakes? You love cupcakes, I’m making cupcakes, she can call me if she needs anything, I won’t be too long. Or wait, do you want something other than cupcakes?”

“Cupcakes are great,” he says, smiling, holding up a hand for a high five as Darcy passes by, her book forgotten, on her way to the door.

As it closes behind her, Jane looks up from her work..

“Did Darcy leave?”

“She’s making cupcakes.”

“Crap, can you grab my phone and call her and have her get more duct tape?”

___________________

  
April

___________________

  
  


“Okay. Okay, thank you, we will. Goodbye.”

“Who was that?” Darcy asks. She’s pulling a tray of chocolate chip cookies from the oven.

“Uh. That was our SHIELD contact. They’re moving us back to the U.S.”

“Wait what?”

“That’s all she really said, she said we’re no longer going to be under the purview of the London offices and they’re bringing us back and setting us up with lab facilities over there.”

“Did they say when? Maybe I can cancel my plane tickets for finals and be in slightly less debt. Since  _ somebody _ won’t share Mewmew-”

“You know how it’s pronounced,” Thor sighs, adding, “thank you,” when Darcy holds out a still-warm chocolate chip cookie on a spatula. He reaches for it, but she holds it away, continuing.

“You  _ could _ give me a lift though, I’d pack light I promise. Just like, a backpack and a purse and me, easy peasy.”

“Darcy, would you shut up about Thor flying you to your finals-”

“Rude.” Darcy finally gives up the cookie to Thor and scoops up another one for herself. “You can get your own cookie,” she adds under her breath as Jane barrels on.

“-we’ve got so much to do to get ready to move, she said they’re coming in two days.”

“ _ What _ ?” Darcy chews helplessly. “Can’t they wait? How am I supposed to study? I have papers to finish too, man this sucks.”

“If you’d finished sooner you wouldn’t have to worry about it now,” Jane half-snaps.

“Um,  _ I’m sorry _ ,” Darcy drops the spatula on the counter with a clatter to hold up a finger. “I’ve been splitting time working for you and getting school to let me do independent studies for everything-” she picks up the spatula again and gestures with it - “while I followed you to New Mexico and Tromso and New York and London  _ and _ almost got killed by various space villains and their lackies, and also, my intern quit so I didn’t have anybody to help me. So  _ excuse the shit out of me _ if I’m a little  _ stressed _ about this little development in our lives.”

She smacks the spatula down with finality. Then picks it up again and chucks it, clattering, into the sink.

Jane watches Darcy for a few long seconds, slack-jawed at her outburst. Thor looks at the cookie in his hands, abashed.

“Can I help you study or anything?” Jane asks lamely, finally.

“I’ll let you know,” Darcy mutters, the fight gone out of her. She picks up another cookie and hands one to Jane as well.

“My apologies for the space villains,” Thor adds quietly.

___________________

  
May

___________________

  
  


“Here we go, it’s the most magical place on Earth: Tarjhay.”

Darcy spreads her arms as they walk through the double sliding doors out of the drizzly gray afternoon.

“I thought it was target?”

“No no, that’s not fancy enough, you really need the accent for it. This place has  _ everything _ . You want batteries? Apples? Patio furniture? Gonna paint your bathroom? Need a cute top and some new underwear? Out of aspirin, and also need a gold stapler and a toilet brush and a bookshelf and diapers? All here. Literally all of it.”

“Are we getting all that now?” Thor asks, pausing between the rows of shopping carts and the rack of smaller baskets.

“Did you bring that credit card Tony sent you?”

“Yes.”

“Then possibly yes, we will get all of that, but let’s start with this list from Jane and then see where the night takes us.” 

He nods and gets a basket from the rack, holding it in one hand and offering Darcy his other arm as they start down the main aisle. It’s such a supremely unrealistically perfect  _ Thor _ thing to do. Darcy steers them to the pharmacy section and the men’s aisle for shampoo and leaves him there with the basket to look for her own a few aisles over. She’s trying to find the Garnier one she’d liked two shampoos ago when Thor reappears with an empty basket.

“Didn’t find anything?”

“It’s all . . . not right. Why do so many say “sport”? Sport is what makes you sweaty, why would you wash with it? And what does “turbo” mean?”

Darcy stifles a really loud snort in one hand and nods half to herself. “Why did I think you would ever defile yourself with Axe or even Irish Spring?” She sighs and gestures to the rows of bottles in front of them. “Do any of these look better or do you need to swing back home and get some Asgardian shampoo?”

Thor looks over the selection critically and Darcy lets him alone, back to her own search. Eventually he picks one after reading over several bottles.

“This. Pure argan oil would be better but this will do.”

“You’re kinda high maintenance, aren’t you?” Darcy asks, nudging him with her elbow.

“Do Midgardian men not understand how to care for their own bodies?”

“It’s alarming how true that is.”

Thor grabs three avocado and grape seed sheet masks from the endcap and drops them in the basket before offering Darcy his arm again.

“Jane-ifer we’re hoooooome!” Darcy calls when they get back later, passing the bags in her hands off to Thor so she can shed her purse and kick off her shoes.

“Jane?” Thor asks as he crosses the living room and deposits the bags on the dining table on his way. “Are you alright?”

Jane is sitting at the kitchen counter chewing on one thumbnail, her cellphone in front of her where she watches it anxiously.

“Darcy?”

“What up?” Darcy asks, veering past the couch and toward the kitchen. 

“When was the last time you heard from Ian?”

“Ian, like intern Ian? Not since he quit, why?”

“That was our SHIELD liaison, she said that Ian’s under investigation and if he contacts us we should report it to them right away. They . . . she said he could be dangerous.”

“ _ Ian _ ?” Darcy snort-laughs in disbelief. “Like, Ian-Ian. Intern Ian. London Ian.” She sobers a bit with each repeat, realizing Jane is not at all kidding. “What are they investigating him for?”

“I don’t know-” Jane shakes her head quickly.

“What did he  _ do _ did he like not initial and date a line on his NDA or is he out there skinning people in a basement somewhere?” Darcy voice rises to shrill. Thor touches her back gently and she flinches at first. “Sorry,” she adds tightly when he moves to step beside her.

“If you like I can contact . . . someone. I’m not sure who, after all the unrest with SHIELD, but I may be able to-”

“Yeah. Yeah, that would be good thanks,” Darcy says softly. 

Thor nods to them both and retreats to the bedroom. Darcy goes to sit next to Jane, slumping on the barstool. 

Jane nudges Darcy’s shoulder with hers. “Kinda creepy.”

“Was he trying to get to your research? Or was it something-”

“Don’t know,” Jane says, uncharacteristically quiet. 

Darcy glances over at her. “I interviewed him, okay, he seemed like a good guy, I know you never paid attention to him but I-”

“Darcy,” Jane sighs, as if it’s a complete sentence, getting up and going to the sink to rinse out a coffee cup.

“What? Darcy what, this is my fault, isn’t it? It’s my fault that I got an intern who didn’t stick around after your boyfriend dumped a pile of evil alien elf guys all over London and ripped a bunch of holes in reality-”

“Why are you blaming  _ Thor _ , he had nothing to do with-”

“You know what I mean, it wasn’t his fault but he was  _ there _ . You were off getting possessed by the liquid red light of doom and going to parties in Asgard and I was alone, okay, Ian and I didn’t know what the fuck to do, and then you all just came waltzing back-”

“What does any of this have to do with Ian not being who he said he was?”

“I don’t know, I’m upset!” Darcy shouts. “I brought him here. I hired him.”

“Darcy, just. Let SHIELD handle it, let Thor handle it, it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.” Darcy mutters, picking viciously at a hangnail until it bleeds. “I’m gonna go lay down,” she adds, pushing back from the counter abruptly. She kicks ineffectively at her bedroom door behind her, letting it bounce back when the latch doesn’t catch and flops on her bed, squeezing her eyes shut.

___________________

  
June

___________________

  
  


“BIRTHDAY SHOTS!” Darcy bellows. 

It’s one of the last things she clearly remembers, later. 

Hers and Jane’s birthdays being four days apart meant it’s one of the few occasions a year that Jane would usually get drunk with Darcy. Darcy was determined that her third-wheelism would not prevent them from both showing Thor a good Midgardian time. Jane was always a pleasant drunk, silly and loose, and Darcy looked forward to every time they had an excuse to put down Jane’s work and both let their hair down.

“I don’t know, is this too sexy? It’s not like I’m trying to pick anyone up,” Jane isn’t even looking in the direction of the mirror, just standing in the doorway of her closet, looking to Darcy and gesturing at her black low-cut top and tight jeans.

“Get over yourself, Foster, go cry to your god-friend about it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that, it sounds so sacreligious.”

“You’re agnostic.”

“And I don’t like when things potentially offend any possibly-existing deity or deities,” Jane calls back from deep in the closet where she’s digging in a forgotten back corner. “We don’t know if they exist much less if they have a sense of humor,” she adds primly, rubbing at a scuff on one of the black stilettos before she slides it on.

Darcy will never understand or stop being annoyed at how Jane can somehow perfectly manage in four inch heels when she only wears them twice a year. Darcy’s own tapered-heel ankle boots are waiting until the last possible second she can put them on before heading out the door, to better prolong the time she can wear them out before they start feeling like murder. Hopefully she’ll be drunk enough by then to not care much. Darcy finishes blotting her lipstick and reapplies it once before tucking the tube into her purse and propping her hands on her hips to survey herself. She tugs on the pale pink top she’d picked that bares a nice little slice of tummy above the waistband of her favorite high-waisted black jeans and nods approvingly in the mirror.

Darcy and Jane emerge from the bedroom, eventually, hair curled, heels on, purses in hand, to find Thor sitting in the living room waiting. His eyes widen gratifyingly at the pair of them and he rises from his chair and bows. 

“Let us celebrate!”

Two drinks and three shots in, Darcy leans over into Thor’s space when they’re both elbowed up to the bar, waiting for Jane to come back from the bathroom. She’s broken the seal way too early in the night and now, Darcy knows, she’ll be gone every twenty minutes to wait in line, pee, scrub her hands for the CDC-recommended thirty seconds, fret over her smudged mascara and drunk-hair, and finally come back to finish her half-melted-ice drink.

“Nice cleavage,” she shouts over the music, poking at his chest a little. The gray v-neck t-shirt he’s wearing is kind of drapey and accentuates . . . everything. She half expects him to not know what ‘cleavage’ means but he just smiles a little blandly the way he does when he’s dealing with someone who thinks he doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

“And you as well,” he says, his eyes never leaving Darcy’s.

They’re dancing, just Jane and Darcy, jumping in the middle of a crush of people and Darcy’s banging into bodies with her elbows and hips and she doesn’t care because the music is so loud that she can’t think about anything but how glad she is in that moment that this feels like every other year she and Jane have gone out for their birthdays. Feels like she isn’t a third wheel, isn’t staring down the barrel of graduation with a nagging feeling that she can’t stay where she is forever and maybe she shouldn’t have even stayed this long, isn’t fighting off loneliness, isn’t doing anything but dancing to a loud song with stupid lyrics and a really good hook.

At some point she stops jumping quite so wildly, twirling and shaking her hips and when she turns once there’s someone there, a guy smiling and dancing close, his eyebrows raised in question. His eyes are blue and his hair is blonde and he’s short, not much taller than her in her heels, and has a baby face with round cheeks and wickedly soft-looking lips.

Darcy looks back for Jane and sees her glancing over her shoulder too, already heading back to the table where Thor is nursing a beer and watching their purses. They nod to each other, Darcy waves, and then she turns back to Blonde Guy and slings her arms around his neck and it’s easy to close her eyes and fit her hips to his and breathe in his cologne and the mint-and-beer smell of his breath.

They’re outside on the smoking patio and she doesn’t specifically remember going there; they’d stopped dancing and he had gone to pee while Darcy went back to the bar and had another shot, waving away Jane and Thor’s questions when she’d stopped at the table for her purse on the way. She’s dropping a dollar bill in the glass with the receipt for her shot and the gin and tonic she’d ordered when Blonde comes up behind her, wraps his arms around her middle and tucks his chin over her shoulder.

Then they’re outside and she’s not sure where her wallet is and she stumbles over the leg of a chair and laughs, holding tight to Blonde’s hand and he’s leaning her up against the brick exterior wall, hands loosely around her wrists when she reaches up to push her hair back, laughing so much there are tears squeezing themselves from the corners of her eyes. He’s kissing her neck, her hands limp at her sides and his on her waist again, her feet hurt so much in her boots, the patio is loud with drunkenly yelled conversations punctuated by silences as the smokers pause to inhale and exhale.

He’s leading her back through the bar, skirting the edge of the dance floor when she thinks they’re going to rejoin the crowd and she’s following with the thought that she’ll find Jane and Thor this way and she’s ready to go home anyway, way too drunk for it to be fun anymore. 

She vaguely makes out the shape of Thor standing at the edge of the throng on the dance floor and she feels her voice in her throat, reaching up to wave to him and having her arm caught, Blonde’s arm around her shoulders and the other holding her arm against his side, he’s saying something about leaving, getting another drink first but she doesn’t want to leave, not with him, they were only dancing, he’s not agreeing he’s just saying something in her ear she can’t make out but she shrugs away and twists again to look and sees Jane, makes eye contact with her for a solid second before Jane looks away to talk to Thor.

_ Seems right _ , something mean and sad inside her pipes up and Darcy lets herself be dragged along for a few more steps until she realizes suddenly that Blonde means to leave with her, and-

“No, I don’t want to go. My friends are here. I changed my mind, okay, stop-”

Suddenly it’s not Blonde’s hand on her wrist, it’s bigger warmer hands removing them and Thor moving like a wall to stand between Darcy and the guy whose name she never knew and she looks up and keeps repeating to Jane, “I changed my mind, can we please go home?”

She’s aware enough to feel it when her thoughts start making sense even while everything inside her is still knocked over in a chaotic mess and all she can do is sit in the backseat of the car as Thor drives them home, her forehead on the cool window. She’d promised Jane she wouldn’t puke in the car and she doesn’t, just holds all the ugly jagged sick of it in her chest and stomach.

Thor holds both her hands as she gets up from the car and she hates every second of the trip inside and to her room where he finally lets go once she’s sitting on her bed and Jane comes to help her get her boots off. 

“Sorry Janey.”

“It doesn’t matter as long as you’re okay.”

“I made it a shitty night.”

“No, that jerk made the end of it shitty, but we’re home now. I’m just glad we were there.”

“Yeah,” Darcy acknowledges miserably.

“Get some sleep,” Jane adds, leaving the lamp on and the door open.

Darcy slumps over and sleeps in her clothes with the light on.

___________________

  
  


“Good morning.”

Darcy mmphs and cracks one eye open to see Thor leaning on the doorframe, in pajama pants, with a cup of coffee and a bottle of aspirin in his hands. He holds them up in offering and Darcy groans and nods. She begins the agonizing process of opening both eyes all the way - gummy and burning with smeared mascara - and rolling over to sit up against the headboard. She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms over her stomach. When she cracks her eyes open again, not having realized she’d closed them until she felt the mattress dip, Thor is sitting on the edge of the bed next to where her feet are braced.

“Jane’s making pancakes,” he says, holding out the aspirin. Darcy waves it away and reaches for the coffee instead, willing it to stay down as she swallows her first sip. “How do you feel?”

“Other than hungover? Like a sloppy idiot. Sorry my intoxication and bad asshole-radar almost ruined the night.”

Thor’s face darkens. “Don’t apologize.”

“What, for interrupting my own attempted date-rape?” She feels like an asshole laying everything bare like she is and absolutely can’t stop herself. She drinks more coffee. “Jane’s  _ making _ pancakes?” she adds belatedly, raising her eyebrows slightly before wincing at the pain of the motion.

“In the toaster? The actual toaster, not the phase meter,” Thor clarifies. 

Darcy cracks a hint of a grin and gives him a point and a half-hearted wink. He smiles back quietly.

“It didn’t seem like you were having much fun. Even before that.” Thor rests one of his hand on her shin and Darcy’s pretty sure he could almost close his thumb and middle finger around her calf. “When the drink hits you, I mean.”

She shrugs, staring down into the coffee. “I’ve always been a sad drunk. I just like to conveniently forget that until it’s too late. Makes it more fun when it’s a surprise every time.”

“The spirits here don’t affect me much but strong Asgardian drink-” he waves a hand, making a face- “I find a deep well of melancholy at the bottom of a single glass.”

Darcy snorts and then moans in pain, making grabby hands at the aspirin. Thor opens the bottle and shakes two out into her palm which she dry swallows and chases with another swallow of coffee.

“Is Jane pissed?” she asks, tipping her head back to rest against the headboard and watching Thor poke at and then try to smooth out a loose thread on her jeans by her knee.

“She doesn’t seem so. Why would she be?”

“She hates stuff like that, like last night. When I’m . . .” Darcy sighs. “Inconvenient? I don’t know if that’s how she really thinks of it but that’s how it feels.”

Thor rests his hand still, his palm over the bend of her knee. His skin is warm through her jeans.

“She was worried for you. She may have also been worried that I would not stay my hand and murder that bastard if I laid eyes on him again as I promised him I would.”

“Thor. You did not.”

He looks back at her, a flicker of affront at her disbelief. “I would gladly kill anyone who means to do you harm.”

Maybe un-hungover and feeling steadier that revelation would have rolled off of Darcy’s back and she would have just quipped at it but she can’t at the moment, her head still pounding and her clothes feeling not-right after the night of sweating in them and then falling asleep dressed.

“It’s ready,” Jane calls from the kitchen.

Thor gives her a casual smile like he hadn’t just promised to murder in Darcy’s name and pats her knee as he gets up, closing her door gently behind him.

Darcy leans her head back and closes her eyes, blows out a slow exhale before forcing herself out of bed to change.

___________________

  
July

___________________

  
  


“Hi, can we please have . . . like, eight hotdogs with everything, two large cheese fries and a large onion rings? And three grape sodas. Oh and two of those ice cream bars, the sandwich ones, the neapolitan flavor, please?”

“Shit,” Darcy realizes after she’s put in their order. “They only take cash here. Do you have any money?”

Thor looks at her blankly.

“Of course you don’t, you have Tony Stark’s credit card, why would you have our peasant currency. Alright, I think I have an emergency twenty in my wallet, can you start digging all the coins out of the console here? I gotta pull around.”

It’s a muggy fourth of July night, the fireworks done and the crowds dispersed. Jane had left for a conference in Berlin on Tuesday and Darcy spent Wednesday catching up on filing, cleaning out her workstation, and giving their whole workspace a thorough clean out and dusting. On Thursday Thor returned from his latest excursion to track down Loki’s scepter with some of the Avengers and Friday during the day they had bummed around at the community pool in the morning, fleeing when it filled up to capacity with screaming kids. They sat in the car in a parking lot not far from where the fireworks were set off and watched through the windshield with the radio tuned in to hear the music. Then: hotdogs.

Darcy finds her emergency twenty dollar bill in her wallet and pulls it out, turning to poke through the coins Thor’s holding in his cupped palms to start picking out the quarters.

“Twenty-two seventy-five,” the girl in the window says when she slides the window open and Darcy swears, picking at the coins more quickly.

Once they’ve paid and gotten their food Thor drops the rest of the change back into the console and Darcy drives them back to the house, leaving the truck out of the garage and getting out to put the tailgate down and sit on it with the food spread out on top of its grease-stained paper bags between them.

“Do you have fireworks in Asgard?”

“Something like them,” Thor answers before he takes another bite.

“I had no idea how hungry I was until right now, oh my god,” she mumbles between bites of cheese fries. 

Crickets chorus around them, punctuated by sporadic pops of fireworks near and far.

“So. No spear this time again, huh.”

“No, but Rogers is hopeful they’re getting closer to finding a good lead. As we get closer I’ll need to spend more time away.”

“You call him Rogers and it’s so hard to picture, like,  _ not _ some bro-friend from the gym or something.”

“He is a great warrior. A good friend.”

“Aw, I’m glad you have friends besides me and Erik, and Janey.”

He smiles warmly and sips more of his soda, wincing a little.

“Okay there has to be something you like other than beer.”

He shrugs, unconvinced.

“Whatever, you’re getting water next time if you can’t even appreciate grape soda on a hot summer night.”

Darcy takes a drink of hers and pointedly sighs and licks her lips afterward, at which Thor laughs softly. She can feel his eyes on her while she picks at her fries.

“What do you think you would do for a job if you were . . . just regular old Joe Schmoe Thor out here trying to make a living. What would you be doing?”

“I could train soldiers.”

“They’d make you cut your hair.”

Thor blanches. Darcy shrugs unapologetically. “Military regulations, my dude. Any other ideas or would you let them shave all this off?” She tugs at a lock of his hair falling from the messy bun he’d been favoring during the current heatwave.

He takes another bite of hot dog, chewing thoughtfully before washing it down with more soda.

“I might like to design buildings. Or, what is it called when you teach the players of a sport?”

“Coach?”

“Yes, I might like to coach. Is that a job?”

“Like a gym teacher? No, you would be like an actual professional coach in a hideous windbreaker.”

“Are those required?”

Darcy looks at his sleeveless black t-shirt and board shorts, the ones with the lime green lightning pattern she had cackled and goaded him into buying when they realized one house on the list of SHIELD-approved dwellings was just blocks from the pool. He’s got aviators pushed up on top of his head.

“No you could wear whatever,” she says, blinking out of her daze of staring at him to steal an onion ring from the shared bag between them.

“What work will you do? Will you stay with Jane once you’ve finished your studies?”

“Well. The thing about that is that Jane’s work is amazing, but it has nothing to do with what I’m studying. Or at least I didn’t think it did at the beginning. I mean, I’m studying how our government works and foreign relations and things like that. But then  _ you _ showed up and now there’s all these other governments and people to manage relationships with, suddenly it seems like I had the exact right combo of major and internship. So who knows. Maybe SHIELD will hire my unqualified butt to make their important people coffee and refill their printers with paper. I am qualified to do that.”

“Darcy-”

He stops, almost as if he’s stopped himself and she can feel the kinetic energy of an aborted gesture. The night is black-dark around them, the crickets loud.

“What? Darcy what?” she prompts him.

“Do you not know how important you are?”

Darcy swallows and looks away, squeezes the sweating can in her hands until the metal just starts to dent under her fingertips.

“Lots of people can make coffee. Lots of people can do everything I can do and more, and-”

“No, that isn’t what I mean-”

“No, no, it’s okay. I don’t need to be a brilliant scientist. It’s  _ okay _ . Most people are incredibly average and are really amazing at maybe two things, and possibly one of those is of value to society. If you’re lucky. Most people just kinda get by. I’m okay with that. I don’t need to be super to be happy. We can’t all be gods, right? Then who would worship you?”

She nudges him, teasing, but the look he turns on her is anything but, hotter than the dense air around them and sparking with curiosity. Darcy ducks her head again. She suddenly feels very naked in the loose peasant top and jean shorts she’d been wearing all day.

“Whew man, I am stuffed and I think it’s getting buggy out here, I’m gonna have like fifty mosquito bites all over my legs in the morning I know it.” 

She hops down from the tailgate, blatantly running away, but she doesn’t have much choice. Thor, mercifully, follows her lead without a word, helping to gather up the wrappers and leftovers and take it all in the house. Another wave of hyper-awareness hits her when she’s unlocking the door at the back of the house, standing on the tiny concrete steps with a moth flinging itself repeatedly at the porchlight and Thor standing just behind her, holding the screen door open and crowding into her space with nowhere else to go. 

Her hands shake getting the key into the lock and she prays he doesn’t notice, working at it for a long moment before she can push the door open and go into the dark house. She leaves the lights off through the mudroom, the kitchen, and the living room, pausing only to kick her shoes off into the closet by the front door.

“Thank you, for tonight.”

Thor stands alone in the darkened living room, a silhouette against the light shining in through the kitchen window. Darcy can feel his eyes on her even though she can’t see them at all, he’s just a shape in the darkness and his familiar deep voice.

“You bet,” she answers quickly, and flees up the creaky wood stairs before she can say anything else.

___________________

  
August

___________________

  
  


Darcy rolls over and taps Thor’s shoulder, offering him an earbud when he squints over at her.

She presses play and lays back down, scooted closer this time so the wire will reach. It’s her collection of Simon and Garfunkel, the big hits and a few lesser-known ones she loves.

Thor lays still and listens to Mrs. Robinson, eyes closed, concentrating. She thinks about showing him The Graduate later, if she can find it to download somewhere. She pauses as the song fades out.

“More?”

“Yes, I like this.”

“Simon and Garfunkel. These were all recorded in the sixties. They get a lot more dramatic too, you’ll like ‘em.”

“Dramatic?”

“Yeah like-”

“You’re saying I’m  _ dramatic _ ?”

“I mean.” She makes exploding hands and a noise that approximates thunder as best she can, then stabby fingers and “pew pew”s for the lighting.

“That’s not what it sounds like,” Thor scoffs primly.

“Wait wait, I didn’t do the rain yet, you do rain too,” she dips her fingertips in her ice water and flicks them at him, cackling when he startles and flails.

“Okay, okay, here, listen to the next one, stop disrespecting The Sound of Silence.”

“Disrespecting,” he mutters darkly, and Darcy swears the sky dims a little, a single gray cloud hurrying across the blazing late-summer sun.

The Sound of Silence transitions into The Boxer, into Cecelia, during which Darcy is gratified to see Thor’s feet tapping on his towel. Darcy pauses again after Homeward Bound and Thor looks over, expectant.

“Do you miss it?”

“Asgard?”

“Yeah.”

He looks up at the sky, his profile clean and regal against the bright backdrop of the green grass, even laying on a plastic lawn chair with knockoff Raybans on and his hair loose around his shoulders.

“I miss being a child there. So many things have changed now. Changed the way I remember it.”

He glances back over at her and Darcy nods. “I totally get that.”

She lays back down and hits play on Kathy’s Song.

_ “And so you see I have come to doubt _

_ All that I once held as true _

_ I stand alone without beliefs _

_ The only truth I know is you _

_ And as I watch the drops of rain _

_ Weave their weary paths and die _

_ I know that I am like the rain _

_ There but for the grace of you go I” _

“This music is sad,” Thor says quietly when the lilting guitar strums its last.

“Yeah,” Darcy murmurs.

“I like it,” he adds, even quieter, hands slack on his chest, eyes closed, face lifted to the sky.

___________________

  
September

___________________

  
  


_ “He didn’t fall?” _

“INCONCEIVABLE!” Darcy shouts from the kitchen.

“You keep using that word,” Jane recites as she picks through unpopped popcorn kernels for raisins, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Darcy pours fresh popcorn into the bowl on top of Jane’s hands, who startles and sighs. 

“Oh! Sorry,” Darcy laughs as scoots out of Thor’s way and flops back down on the couch. She folds her legs under her and picks up an open bag of Doritos. She holds them up and shakes them at Thor in offering and he gamely scoops out a handful. “Yeah get in there buddy.”

“They don’t have these on Asgard,” Thor says through a mouthful.

Jane wrinkles her nose.

“That’s a fucking travesty,” Darcy declares.

“Darce let him watch the movie-”

“No, we can watch it again, I’m frankly getting mad that everybody says Asgard is so great, thank you,” she interrupts herself when Thor tops up her wine glass, “when they don’t even have  _ Doritos  _ or  _ The Princess  _ freaking  _ Bride _ , I mean-”

“It’s because they’re more advanced, it’s not-”

“Bullshit! Just because something is comparatively primitive doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.”

“It’s a different  _ culture _ -”

“Whatever, I bet the modern day earth-Norse have Doritos, we’ll let Google settle this.” Darcy starts tapping on her phone and Jane looks askance at Thor. He holds his hands up helplessly. 

“Google,” he repeats with a shrug.

Jane shakes her head, laughing, and offers Thor a raisin which he accepts happily.

“AH HA!” Darcy bellows, half-standing from the couch with one foot on the cushion and her wine sloshing precariously in its glass as she gestures and reads aloud. “In Norway the Cool Ranch flavor are called  _ Cool American _ . So HA.”

“Okay Darcy, you win,” Jane sighs.

“I do,” Darcy agrees, folding herself back onto the couch. She sips her wine and points to the screen where Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts are in the midst of their sword duel. “Can you do that?” she asks Thor, nudging his arm with her elbow and pointing.

“I never needed to learn, Mjolnir mostly,” he makes a smashing motion with one hand. Mjolnir itself, as if it heard him, seems to rouse from its hook amongst the coats by the front door. 

___________________

  
October

___________________

  
  


“There were more Thors than Hulks,” Thor points out.

“And there were more Hulks than Iron Mans. Men. Irons Men,” Darcy adds, slurring just slightly. They’ve had more than a few beers over the evening.

“But there were more Captain Americas than . . . everything.”

“Can’t win ‘em all, my friend.”

“Do you think the helmet puts them off? It’s not very comfortable. And mine was custom made.”

“True, but then you get the most dedicated ones, like that girl who made herself into the giant Thor prayer candle.”

“I liked the one who was both me, and Captain America at once.”

“The flag cape was inspired,” Darcy agrees. 

They both fall silent for a few minutes, each picking through the dregs of the candy bowl, the last of the trick or treaters long since left. The Addams Family plays quietly on the TV while Darcy sits on the floor and Thor on the couch, both bent over the candy bowl.

“Did Jane tell you they found Ian?” Darcy asks quietly.

“Ian, the intern who-?”

Darcy nods, picking studiously at the stick from a Blow-Pop until she can get the edge of the paper up with her nail and start to peel it back.

“I don’t know if he’s- like-” Darcy motions vaguely and shakes her head, leaving the thought hanging. 

Thor watches her cautiously for a few moments. “If you like I can ask-”

“No, no. I don’t want to go digging into all that. Not like it’s about me, I mean,  _ HYDRA _ and all, but, I have enough middling-to-shitty exes. I don’t really need to embellish that one, y’know?”

“You and Ian were-”

“Kind of. I don’t know. It was something, I thought, for a little while. Then he up and quit, so I don’t know if any of it was real.”

“You spoke with Jane about this?”

Darcy huffs and goes back to peeling the Blow-Pop stick, working her thumbnail up the side to loosen the whole edge of the paper.

“Jane told me. While in the middle of taking notes on some charts, as Jane does. Like she was telling me what the weather was like.  _ Oh, by the way, you were semi-casually fucking a psychopath for a few months last year, did you finish the filing? _ ”

Thor closes his eyes and nods, sighs, and shrugs a little. “Jane is . . . not gifted with sympathy in that way.”

“Do you ever talk to her about...”

“About what?”

Darcy swallows and looks down again. “Nevermind.”

“About what?”

“About your brother? Your mom?”

Thor smiles sadly. “Jane is not gifted with sympathy in that way,” he repeats.

Darcy blows out a breath, not sure what to say. Eventually the paper Blow-Pop stick loosens and unrolls under her fingers. She flattens it on the table methodically.

“How are you so steady? Is it like a puny human squabbles don't matter over the course of millennia thing?” she asks eventually.

“Squabbles?”

“Like you know, disagreements, annoyances.”

“In Asgard it's a kind of . . .” Thor motions with his caramel apple pop, “like a bat but it's amphibious and it sheds its skin in these soggy, flaky piles and-”

“Okay different word.”

“Mm. I don’t know. That's just...Jane. You and I know she means well.”

“I think I'm just too sensitive. Like I know she doesn't mean anything by it, being the way she is. So I should just let it go right?”

Darcy abandons flattening the slightly spitty paper and picks a stray candy corn out of the pile.

“But I don't let it go. I mostly do, but one little part of me just holds onto it for like a month and I mess something up with the equipment or I get her coffee order wrong for no reason. And it makes her mad every time. And she's just . . . fucking  _ mean _ every time. And it all starts over. And it's so little, like it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things right? It doesn't matter.”

“It sounds like it matters,” he says quietly. He clears his throat. “You should talk to her, I’m sure if she understood-”

“It’s as much me as it is her,” Darcy cuts in, shaking her head. “I don’t know. I think I just need to. Change. Me.” She laughs, sadly.

“Darcy-” They both quiet, the canned laughter from the TV breaking it. The moment stretches. “Darcy,” Thor repeats. He draws the pad of his thumb down her cheek softly.

“Please don’t,” she whispers, eyes closed against it.

He doesn’t move, index finger now sliding along her jaw slowly. “Don’t what?”

She shakes her head, pushes up from the floor, and gathers up a handful of some of the empty wrappers from the table and walks over to the kitchen to throw them out, just to get away. She leans her hands on the counter and breathes in and out, in and out, gathering her words.

“I know this is like the cliche thing to say, but you and I are friends and I really really l-like you as a friend. Okay, and  _ Jane _ is my friend. I knew her before you did and I was here the whole time you were gone. And, you know, it’s really great that you came back for her and that you guys can be together now. And I don’t want anything to mess that up.”

She draws in another breath, jagged and shaking in her throat. “And you’re not stupid.  _ Don’t what _ . You know what I mean.”

Thor’s slouched on the couch, rubbing his palms together. He slumps just slightly as she watches him. 

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.” 

He leans forward and gathers up the rest of the wrappers, balls them up in one hand and brings the candy bowl in the other, offering the bowl to her from across the counter top and skirting widely around her to throw away the rest of the candy wrappers. He pauses, standing a few feet behind her.

“Please, forgive me. I won’t offend your friendship again.”

She doesn’t answer and he doesn’t wait, heading across the living room to the stairs. She turns the words over and over for along time, hands gripping tight to the edge of the countertop until her palms and her knuckles ache with the strain of it.

___________________

  
November

___________________

  
  


“Wait, go back?”

“To what?” Darcy mashes the back button until Thor bats her hand away gently. “ _ This _ ?” she asks, incredulous.

“Yes, wait, just listen.”

_ This is amazing grace _

_ This is unfailing love _

_ That You would take my place _

_ That You would bear my cross _

“Thor? Why are we listening to Christian radio right now?”

“He just sang about holy thunder! I thought-”

Darcy purses her lips to tamp down a guffaw. “Did you think it was about you?”

Thor shifts in his seat a little. “It’s not  _ that _ unlikely.”

“Oh buddy. Oh, Big T. You’re my favorite.”

He preens a little in spite of himself, before changing the station.

___________________

  
  


“Hey, can I see your phone?”

Thor tosses his phone to Darcy with a willingness that shows exactly how little he ever has or will use it and Darcy manages to roll her eyes while clumsily catching it to her chest with both hands.

“Perfect, be right back,” she waves the phone at him and scoots off to her room shaking her head when he barely even looks up.

Ten minutes later she’s back, handing the phone back with iTunes open and a playlist queued up.

“Hit play.”

_ The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves _

_ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays _

_ Roy Orbison singing for the lonely _

_ Hey, that's me and I want you only- _

“Darcy?”

“All thunder songs, my friend. Just for you.”

Thor scrolls through the list, smiling. Darcy pats him on the shoulder and gets up, pulling on her coat and a beanie. “I gotta go meet Erik, I’m helping him break in a new T.A. for next semester. See you later!”

She can hear the volume go up through the door when she closes it and cackles to herself as the screen door closes behind her.

___________________

  
December

___________________

  
  


“You’re leaving again?”

“I’ve just got so much interest in my work right now, I know it’s not ideal timing for you-”

“Uh, yeah, I have finals. That I actually have to take. I know I’ve had to skip out on a lot of the travel the last few months but this semester has really been kicking my ass. There’s no way I can go with you this time Jane, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay! That’s totally fine, because this is a fully equipped lab and they have assistants and everything so I can do this one on my own no problem.”

“Oh-kay,” Darcy mutters, standing off to the side as Jane flits around gathering file boxes and loose sheafs of paper. “Hey what about Thor?”

“What? Oh.” Jane stops, looking around briefly as if expecting him to be there. “I mean he’s been gone so much lately looking for Loki’s scepter I don’t think it’ll really make a difference, right?”

“Right, but. I mean, when he  _ is _ back don’t you wanna, y’know, be here? To be with him?”

“Of course but I can’t just put my life on hold-”

“No, I know. I know, you’re right, you shouldn’t have to do that. So have you talked to him, like does he know you’re going?”

“Yeah I left him a voicemail. And you’ll be here, right?”

“Right.”

Seemingly satisfied, Jane goes back to her whirling dervish impression. “It’s gonna be so good to really immerse in my work, you know?”

Darcy smiles a little halfheartedly. “Yeah. Yeah it is. C’mere.” Darcy pulls Jane into a hug and squeezes tight. “Do good science Janey.”

___________________

  
January 2015

___________________

  
  


“I feel like I’m supposed to be, like, taking you out on the town to experience a real Earth-y New Year’s Eve but honestly I’m more of a Cheetos and champagne on the couch sorta girl. Do you mind?”

“What are Cheetos?”

“Oh my  _ god _ .”

Darcy nearly eats it four times just to and from the car on the thickly iced sidewalks but they make it to the closest grocery store where she and Thor stock up on snacks, champagne, and plastic 2015 glasses and party hats.

“I really feel like I’ve failed you,” she says when they’re installed on the couch with Rockin’ New Years Eve on TV and champagne in coffee mugs. “Like, how did I show you Doritos and not Cheetos? I’m a failure of an American.”

“Do most of your favorite foods turn your fingers orange?” he asks contemplatively, licking the cheese dust off his own fingers.

“Jesus, get me where I live, why don’t you?”

Thor smiles sheepishly and shrugs.

“Did Jane call you?”

“When she landed.”

“Yeah but how are things going, with-”

“She, ah. She hasn’t since.”

“Oh,” Darcy says quietly. “Sorry.”

Thor nods, and takes a drink of his champagne.

“Well if anybody knows how she is, it’s us,” Darcy adds briskly, trying to shove what she’d just asked back under the rug. “I know she misses you. She’s just not great at remembering to call.”

“She’s happy with her work. I’m happy she’s happy.”

“Yeah,” Darcy murmurs, suddenly carefully inspecting her orange-tinged thumbnail. “Hey, I know what we need,” she hops up from the couch and hurries to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a couple of sets of disposable chopsticks. “These are how the true devotees do it.”

Thor, of course, knows exactly how to use chopsticks already, which Darcy finds rather offensive. 

The ball drops, the confetti falls, the crowds cheer. Darcy picks up the empty bag and used chopsticks and escapes to the kitchen rather than thinking about kissing anyone. 

___________________

  
February

___________________

  
  


“How long has it been? Since you’ve seen him?” Jane stands in the doorway of Darcy’s room, watching while Darcy packs a suitcase.

“Like . . . a year? Since I came back for finals right before SHIELD sent us back.”

“So listen,” Jane barrels on, “I’ve got some offers to come tour observatories in Spain, Poland, and Scotland.”

“I know, I sort your mail.”

“So I was just wondering when you wanted to schedule those after your visit. Spain sounds pretty interested, we could get a nice set up there.”

“Spain.” Darcy states it, keeping her eyes on the socks she’s pairing and tossing into the less-full splotches of space left around her clothes and ziplock bags of toiletries.

“Yeah, their facilities are-”

“We just got back this summer and with SHIELD-”

“Right, I don’t want to count solely on their funding, I’ve got to keep my options open so these invitations really came at a perfect time.” 

“I have two more classes to finish my degree.”

“Okay?” Jane huffs a little laugh, shaking her head slightly, “So you need to get independent studies in order, or…?”

“I didn’t think you were planning on really relocating again any time soon. I mean with Thor here-”

“I don’t think it really makes a difference-”

“Right.” Darcy cuts in. She swallows and blinks, staring down into the suitcase. She looks up briefly, eyes casting around the room she’d lived in for the last several months. “Right,” she repeats, a sigh this time. She turns to Jane, squares her shoulders. “Um. I’m going to finish packing. And I’m gonna go visit my dad and I will figure out what my options are for school when I get back. I don’t even know if I technically can do independent studies for these last two, so. Yeah.”

“Okay. Well if you need something signed or anything just let me know.” Jane taps on the door frame and turns to go.

“Sure,” Darcy answers, staring hard at Jane’s back, almost startled when she pauses and turns back.

“Oh, and can you graph the last three months’ meteoric data coinciding with moon phases?”

“Yeah. When I get back.”

“I know. Have a good trip.”

___________________

  
March

___________________

  
  


It’s the middle of the night when Thor returns weary and unsettled. Every time Darcy or Jane has asked about his time away he’s been vague, unwilling to saddle either of them with the knowledge that Ian had been a surprising wealth of knowledge on HYDRA’s operations. 

He keeps his tread light through the living room when he sees Jane asleep on the couch with two textbooks and a sheaf of papers spread over her. Carefully he dislodges the books and papers and sets them on the coffee table, replacing them with a blanket. Jane never stirs.

He’s about to head up the stairs when something catches his eye on the kitchen island.

A cupcake sits on a small plate, a single candle stuck into the center of its swirl of chocolate frosting. There’s a post it note stuck on the countertop beside with an arrow drawn on it, pointing to the cupcake, and below a lightning bolt inside a circle with a line through it. When he picks up the note there’s a book of matches beneath. There’s also a card beside all of it in an envelope, a single uppercase “T” scrawled on it. 

The card inside says on the cover: “ _ Happy Birthday from the worst influence in your life _ ”

Thor frowns and opens it to read the inside: “ _ Admit it, you love that about me _ .”

Darcy had signed it with three x’s and a flourishy “Queen B,” and below that, “ _ P.S. Seriously use the matches, do not lightening burn this place down, unless it means we get to move in with your work friends.” _

He smiles and sets the card down, leans on the counter tiredly with his hand over it still, contemplating the cupcake. Jane stirs in the living room but then quiets again after turning to her side. Thor strikes a match, lights the candle, and watches it burn for several long silent moments before he blows it out.

He licks his fingers clean after he’s eaten the cupcake and takes the card with him, stowing it in the drawer of his bedside table before falling tiredly into bed.

___________________

  
April

___________________

  
  


“Dad where’s this painting from?” Darcy asks, looking up at a framed watercolor of a grassy cliff overlooking a stormy ocean and overcast skies.

“Oh I got it at a yard sale,” her dad calls back from the kitchen over the din of the dishwasher and a radio mounted beneath a cabinet playing INXS. “Remember Jerry and Melinda from around the corner?”

“Oh yeah, are they moving or something?”

“No, dead.”

Darcy widens her eyes to herself and shakes her head before un-pausing the YouTube knitting tutorial she has pulled up on her phone. “Both of them?”

“Yeah, carbon monoxide leak, how’s ‘bout I do a chicken for dinner? A nice roasted chicken?”

“Okay but don’t make me make the gravy, I suck at it.”

“It’s just stirring!”

“I’m gifted in different ways!” Darcy yells back. She frowns at the uneven row she’s just finished but presses on anyway. “Carbon monoxide’s a good way to go actually. You just fall asleep or whatever, right?”

“Oh yeah, Cheryl Bombach finally found ‘em, went over there knockin’ on the door to get a casserole dish back, can you believe that?”

“Ol’ Cheryl,” Darcy mutters, nodding.

“Well you know Cheryl, she’s a little wrong in the head, so she doesn’t just leave a note or make a phone call, no, she goes all around the house knocking on windows! Can you believe that?”

“Cheryl,” Darcy repeats, frowning at the uneveness of her current row in comparison to the last uneven row.

“Anyway she saw the two of ‘em slumped over on the sofa together, TV still on and everything.”

“What were they watching?” Darcy prompts.

“What were they- nothing, Darcy, they were  _ dead _ .”

“Ohhhh, right right right, I’d forgotten with all Cheryl’s tomfoolery.” Darcy catches her dad’s eye when he pops up in the pass through and gives her a look. She smiles back and winks at him, to which he throws up his hands and shakes his head, turning to dig around in the fridge instead. “You miss me, Pop!”

It’s quiet for a moment, just her dad’s puttering in the kitchen and the radio, coming to the end of “Never Tear Us Apart.” Darcy sings along under her breath:

_ “Two worlds collided _

_ And they could never tear us apart” _

“Darcy-baby you want brussels sprouts or green beans?”

“ _ AND THEY COULD NEVER TEAR US APART  _ beans please!” Darcy wails, then answers.

“I’m gonna have too much, maybe we should invite somebody, you wanna invite somebody?”

Darcy squints at her row. Thor pops into her mind suddenly and fully; he would love this, in that indulgently curious way he has about normal-people-things, she thinks. He would get a kick out of her dad anyway, but then everybody does. He would like all the tchotchkes and years-old newspapers lying around. The pictures of Darcy’s mom on the walls that only ever seemed to make her dad sad in a bittersweet way. Somehow her widower father’s empty nest, which he had left nearly exactly as her pregnant mother had left it when they left for the hospital, never seems empty or sad.

Darcy lets her hands drop to her lap still, holding her needles loosely, feeling herself space out even further.

“I don’t know anybody to invite anymore, Dad.”

“Well not Cheryl anyway, we can agree on that,” he replies. 

Darcy smiles absently. “Dad are you happy?”

“What?”

“Are you happy? Like, with your life. With this house, this town, all that stuff?”

“Happier when you’re here, kiddo. But I know you can’t be all the time.”

Darcy gets up leaves her knitting behind, going over to the kitchen pass through and leaning her elbows on it. Her dad mirrors her, leaning his own hands on the countertop and stopping his cooking to look back at her with a fond smile.

“Are you happy?” he asks back.

“I’m not  _ un _ happy with most things.”

He smiles a little sadly and shrugs. “Well. That’s not bad. You’ve got some highs to look forward to. Right?”

Darcy smiles. “Right.”

___________________

  
May 2015

___________________

  
  


“Hello?”

“Darcy?”

“Yeah, Thor? That’s you right?”

“Yes, I-”

“Okay I think this is literally the first time you’ve ever used your phone as a phone, I didn’t even know you brought it with you. Is everything okay?”

“Hardly.”

“Yeah. I guess I knew that. I mean I’ve seen the news with Dr. Banner, and then that whole thing in Sokovia. People have been freaked about using the internet or any kind of Stark tech, there’s a whole plethora of conspiracy theories-”

“Darcy,” Thor cuts in, “are you safe?”

Darcy sighs over the line, sounding resigned. “You’d know better than me, buddy. I’m moving to Indiana, actually, I got a job. Kinda far from any kind of world-threatening action for a change.”

“Good. Good, that’s good.”

“Jane’s in Ontario,” she adds. “Did you try calling her?”

He’s caught for a moment, chagrined. “I’m glad to know she’s safe,” he says finally.

“Oh,” Darcy murmurs. “Okay.”

There’s a long pause, silent on both ends of the line. Darcy looks into her half-packed suitcase and squeezes her eyes shut tight. 

“You’re not coming back this time are you?”

“I’m afraid not for some time. There is something greater at work than any of these battles, something . . . something worse. Much worse. I need to find out more.”

Darcy swallows and nods to herself, feeling the twinge of tears behind her eyes and blinking them back as best she can. She forces a smile onto her face even though he can’t see it. “You can say you’re going back to space, I get it.”

He smiles, saddened and endeared. “My Darcy. I’ll miss you.”

She inhales harshly.

“Well I won’t miss you. Nope. I’ve got big things happening in Indiana where I will  _ not _ have to explain Earth things to anybody. Or share my shampoo. Or go grocery shopping like three times a week.”

“Darcy.”

“And you leave hair ties everywhere, which was not as convenient as I thought it would be at first. And your goddamn shoes are enormous and I won’t have to trip over them by the front door anymore. And I’ll get to finish my own box of cereal. And skip around when I watch shows because I won’t have to worry about them not making sense when you’re seeing them for the first time.”

“Darcy, I-”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I have to go.”

“Okay. I know. Go. Be safe. Maybe come back sometime.”

“I- Farewell.”

___________________

**Author's Note:**

> This whole fic came about when I wanted to write a Darcy/Thor post-Infinity War fic and needed to figure out their relationship leading up to that point. So as you may guess, there is more story that continues after this, it's just not finished enough to post yet.
> 
> Still, this part is *done* after close to two years of on-and-off working on the whole concept/world/series and I'm so pleased to have this part ready to share.


End file.
